Continuation Betting Poker Strategy - Poker Continuation Bet

So you raised preflop, your opponent(s) called and you now head to a flop. Now what? The following article aims to discuss the various aspects of continuation betting in poker e.g when you should bet, when you should give up, how position effects c-betting and the size of your continuation bet relative to the size of the pot. Lets start!

Boards that are good to continuation bet

The effectiveness of your continuation bet will be a mush between your equity (strength of your hand), the board texture and your opponents tendencies. The first thing you should know about is, the best boards to continuation bet are dry flops. The reason for this is because the less coordinated the board, the harder it is to hit. Ideal boards are boards with one high card and two low cards, without a flush draw. Basically, any board that is unconnected without a flush draw. For example, Ad 2c 7h or Kd Qs 2h.

Another interesting caveat about dry boards is that if our opponent continues, they will usually call our c-bet instead of raising. Most medium strength hands will be called and most monsters will be slowplayed (because our opponent figures we wont have hit the board hard very often) So for example, we raise preflop, the flop comes down T22 if we c-bet our opponent is not very likely to raise TT or 22. The implication of this is we dont have to worry about getting raised so much and we can bet both our bluffs and marginal strength hands for thin value to take down the dead money.

Bad boards to continuation bet

Flops that are bad to continuation bet are “wet” flops. These are boards that are coordinated with flush draws and straight draws. It is also weighted towards middling cards, For example, as a preflop raiser the board 8d 9d Tc is worse to continuation bet than say, As Ks Qh. The reason for this is a lot of preflop calling ranges include middling suited connectors and medium pairs. As the preflop raiser you are more likely to hit the high card flop than the low card flop. Its as simple as this, the more coordinated the board is, the more likely our opponent are to hit the board strongly.

When I say boards are either good or bad to continuation bet, this is relative to your pot equity in the hand. For example. If you have a set or two pair or a strong draw on a wet board, you of course want to continuation bet it. What I mean by saying a board is bad to continuation bet, is that the board is bad to continuation bet without strong equity. If we have a strong hand or a strong draw we can profitably bet almost any flop because our pot equity accompanied by the fold equity we generate by betting is more than enough to turn a previously -ev situation into a +ev situation.

Continuation betting in position

If we have a medium strength hand on a wet board we may not want to continuation bet when we have position. Especially if we are facing an aggressive player. Frequently draws and big hands will be fast played, also your opponent is more likely to bluff raise a wet board because he can represent more hands. An example would be checking behind Jx on Jd 8d 9c. You have to weigh up the odds of being raised on the flop and having to fold our hand vs getting value from worse hands and letting hands that would fold the flop have a free look at cracking our hand that would have otherwise folded if we bet. As a general rule of thumb, with a medium strength hand I am more likely to go for thin value and protection against passive players. Against aggressive players who will frequently raise our continuation bets when they have a draw, I sacrifice some equity by allowing them to have a free card so that we don’t get raised off our hand when they are bluffing/semi-bluffing.

Continuation betting out of position

When out of position you want to be c-betting more than when you are in position. The reason for this is because when you are in position, you can freqently check back a number of hands. For example, You have pocket queens and raise from early position and get called by the button. You head to the flop out of position. Flop comes down, Kd 2s 5h. In this spot you want to be continuation betting your pocket queens instead of checking. The reason for this is because out of position, our hand becomes very hard to play profitably without the initiative. Inversely, take the same scenario, but now we raise from the cuttoff (CO) and the big blind (BB) calls. In this spot on a Kd 2s 5h board, we would want to check this back a portion of the time to manage and control the size of the pot.

How position effects our opponents calling ranges

When you are in position, you can profitably cold call a lot of implied odds hands such as suited connectors and small pairs which you cant play profitably out of position. For example, if we are an early position raiser and called by late position and the flop comes down 4 5 6, our opponent could have hands like 44 55 66 45 56 67 78 in his range. Inversely, if we are on the button and raise preflop and get called by the big blind, assuming our opponent is a competent player, he should fold all of these hands out of position (with the exception of maybe 55 and 66). What are the implications for this in regards to c betting? Well, when we are on the button playing vs the BB we can continuation bet these low flops a lot more profitably than if were are early position and the preflop caller is in late position. Also, since we are the button, we can represent a wide range of hands on a lot of flops, since our raising range is very wide and includes low cards, high cards or one of each.

Continuation bet sizing

The size of our continuation bet as a rule should be between half and the full pot. The more wet the board is the closer to pot we should continuation bet. The more dry the flop, the smaller our continuation bet should be.

The reasoning behind this is simple and two fold. On super dry boards, for example A 7 2 rainbow, our opponent either is continuing with the hand or hes not. If our opponent has 9 T, hes folding on the flop whether we bet full pot or half pot. Essentially, if we bet more than half pot, the extra money is wasted. If our opponent has Ax, 7x or a pocket pair 8s-k’s he is going to call our continuation bet whether we bet half pot or full pot. Quick tip: Leverage your bets to get the most value for your money.

Inversely, on wet boards, the larger we bet, the more often we can fold out weaker hands. Lets say we raise preflop with XX, our hand doesn’t matter. Flop comes down 7QJ with a flush draw. If we bet half pot our opponent is likely to call with hands as weak as AT 8T 7x however if we bet 4/5 pot we are likely to get folds out of these hands. The other reason we bet larger on these boards is because, on wet boards we are c-betting less frequently, when we do c-bet we usually mean business and have some kind of pot equity, for those circumstances we want to build a pot. The threat of big bets on the turn and river usually means our opponents will fold the weaker portion of there range on the flop.

One thing you must not do is, modify your bet sizing based on the stength of your hand. If you play a certain number of hands with someone and regularly do this, it wont take long for someone to pick this tell up on you. Its ok to vary your betsizing based on board texture, its NOT ok to vary your betsizing based on hand strength. I know you want to bet small with the nuts to keep them in, and big with air to bluff them out, but don’t do it. If you are the preflop raiser with AA and the flop comes down A72 and you usually c-bet $3.5 into a $6 pot, don’t decide to check when you have topset.

Continuation betting in multiway pots

In 3 way pots I usually continuation bet pretty often on dry boards because its still pretty hard for my opponents to hit it hard. I have also recognised that in multiway pots your continuation bet gets more respect. For example, You raise XX preflop and are called in two spots, the flop comes down K 6 5. In this spot you might get a fold from say pocket 7′s or 8′s if you continuation bet into two people where you would have got floated if it was a headsup pot. Also, people often float ace high rainbow and king high rainbow flops to bluff, they will always fold these hands and float you less in a multiway pot due them giving you more credit for a stronger range.

Long story short, the more players in the pot, the more likely someone is to hit the board, so dont continuation bet as wide, especially on wet boards. In 4 way pots, I don’t continuation bet dry boards with pure air. Sometimes I will with overcards and backdoor draws, but I class that as equity, not air.

Continuation betting based on your opponents tendencies

Against loose passive players, usually the bad players at the table, you want to continuation bet less and give up on more flops when you have no equity. You can still continuation bet with weak hands with equity, for example bottom pair, or two overcards, or backdoor draws. However, these players will call you a large amount so its often good to give up on the flop and let them take the pot. The worst players will call almost every continuation bet, so you may even want to give up on dry flops, usually not.

There will be a spectrum between these loose passive players who call too much and tight nits who folds to much. Ideally, you want to be continuation betting more with air hands against the people who will fold and less against the people who will call. Simple!

Useful tip: If you use poker tracker or holdem manager, look up the fold to continuation bet statistic to see how often your opponent folds. Remeber, you need a sample of atleast a few hundred hands to put any merit into the accuracy of this stat.

Advanced tip: You may find some loose passive players who call a lot of flop bets but fold to a lot of turn bets (poker tracker stat: fold to turn bet), against these players, a good strategy would be to bet the flop with the intention on following up on almost any turn card. Essentially, you will be inflating the pot and creating dead money so you can make a profitable bet on a later street.